November 6, 2014Burka
The day after a door crushes his thumb,
the stain that flutters out of his cuticle
looks, at first, like a black squid
floating up through a pink sea. Then,
poised above the nail’s half-moon,
it seems a black burka with a white
slot through which dark pupils stare.
“Her face is scarred,” he thinks.
“She wears the burka to spare me.”
Then he thinks the eyes are Mom’s—
not crazed, as in the nursing home.
Forgiving. Warm. Or they belong
to some woman he misunderstood,
rejected, deceived, who loves him
still. Each day, the fluttering mark
climbs higher on his nail’s flesh-
colored wall. Bit by bit, it tops
his fingertip, is clipped, and falls,
re-joining—like everything he loved
has done or soon will do—
the dark.
from #43 - Spring 2014